Prince Of Prints

Artist Puts Experience To Work At Hu

March 04, 1990|By MARK ST. JOHN ERICKSON Staff Writer

HAMPTON — Ron Adams seems too long and lanky for the confines of his tiny Hampton University studio. His bald head, perched on top of a tall lean body, nearly scratches the fluorescent lights as he moves around under the low ceiling. His arms and legs spill across the room like giant pick-up sticks as he lights a cigarette, takes a drag of nicotine and settles into an armchair near a sunny window.

Smoke curls from his lips and wafts into the open air as he starts to talk, describing his boyhood affection for drawing. Then Wee Wee, his red and green Amazon parrot, begins to cluck and whistle as the printmaker recalls his work with such celebrated artists as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Josef Albers, Roy Lichtenstein and Frank Stella.

"I've often been referred to as a master printer," he says, smiling as the bird falls quiet. "But I seldom use the term to describe myself. To me, a master printer is someone who is infallible - someone who can walk on water.

"There are very few of us out there who can really back up that description. I have my good days. And I have my bad days, too."

The 55-year-old Adams came to Hampton last fall as the school's first official artist-in-residence. But he's actually the latest in a long line of accomplished black artists, including such nationally recognized figures as Charles White and John Biggers, who have worked within the university's hall.

The university president William R. Harvey, initiated the new program in the hopes of rekindling the schools' once-flourishing visual arts tradition. "We had many nationally known people study here in the '40s and '50s," he says. "We wanted to recapture that level of excellence and enthusiasm again."

Now semi-retired, Adams brings more than 20 years of printmaking experience to his new position. He's the founder and former owner of Hand Graphics Ltd., a Santa Fe, N.M., graphics workshop that specializes in hand-pulled prints. Before that he was a master printer at the famous Gemini G.E.L. studios in Los Angeles, one of the foremost custom print workshops in the world.

His other credits include an extensive array of murals and posters created for the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Yet despite this impressive portfolio of achievements, Adams' success hasn't come easily. He's one of only a handful of black master printers working in the United States.

The Detroit-born artist began drawing "as far back as I can remember," he says. Though he was encouraged by his father, an electrician who drew and read poetry as hobbies, the rest of his working-class family never understood his fondness for artistic pursuits.

That lack of understanding hardened after the boys' parents divorced and left him to live with relatives. In one instance, his uncle - a practical man who had worked at a Ford plant for 35 years - refused to let the child enter a Detroit Art Institute program for gifted kids.

"He said, `You shouldn't be thinking about that kind of thing,'" Adams recalls. "And then he refused to sign the papers. I guess going into that `artsy' business just wasn't the brightest thing in the world from their point of view."

The would-be artist faced another hurdle after he graduated from high school and entered a commercial art program in California. Despite liking his work, some of his well-meaning teachers advised him to try a different direction. "They didn't want to say I couldn't make a living as a black commercial artist because I wouldn't be able to find a job," he says. "After about a year-and-a-half, I dropped out."

Adams eventually returned to school and earned a degree in technical illustration. After working at such companies as Hughes Aircraft and Litton Industries, he enrolled at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles.

The experience proved exhilarating after his tedious life of drawing electrical and engineering illustrations for technical manuals. "Once I got into that, it opened up my whole life," he says. "I found out where I wanted to go."

The young artist got his first professsional exposure to printmaking during his three-year stay in Mexico. He began working at the Gemini studios when he returned to California in 1969.

The workshop was just becoming known as an important center in the contemporary printmaking revival, and Adams' ability helped it attract international attention. By the time he left to open his own shop in 1974, he had worked with some of the country's best-known artists. Together they produced series after series of unusually large and innovative limited-edition color prints.

Such collaborations were both mentally and physically taxing, he says. They required as much as two months' intensive work in which he had to combine the seemingly unrelated qualities of a therapist, a stevedore and a surgeon.